How to measure your social media presence?

You have ‘uploaded’ your business on various social-media sites but have not been able to co-relate your social-media footsteps with your brand’s online presence? It’s time for you to put a few strategies into place to measure your social-media presence and also earn big bucks. What is the purpose of having thousands of fans or followers if they do not translate into customers, right? But first and before you begin your quest, make a list of your goals. • What is it that you want to accomplish through your social media efforts? • Is it to sell more products? • Establish yourself as a leader or • Just steer more traffic to your website? Once you are through with this, gather all the data you need to meet these goals before you get bogged down by the various gears used to secure your data. For example: for Facebook, the areas of focus are comments, likes and posts. You know you are being heard when your post or page gets ‘likes’. You engage a consumer when you get a ‘comment’ on your post, a.k.a initiation of two way communication. Similarly, for Twitter, the more followers you get, the more is your influence. Less is more! Wondering how? Now that you know what you have to track, you need to find the right tools to measure them. Don’t go for the classy ones available in the market. Minimalism is the answer. Try Google Alerts and iGoogle. They are free of charge, hassle-free and will e-mail you the moment someone keys in your keywords; example – the name of your organization. You can set as many alerts as you want to; blogs, web posts, social media sites, you name them, you get them. Think Smart! If your Facebook page has more than 30 fans, you can use Facebook Insights to gauge your presence. On one hand, Hoot Suite & Tweet Deck provide the same metrics for Twitter, on the other, FeedBurner will analyse your blogs. Don’t forget to try Nutshell Mail, Rowfeeder, Kurrently and Addict-o-matic tools for your social media sites. Paid services: Well, if you are can afford to budget and pay for social media instruments, then there are several services than you can avail. How about you try PostRank, Radian 6 or JittterJam? But, when choosing a paid service, keep the following questions in mind. Are all the social media sites like, Facebook, Google Plus and Twitter integrated? Are all your RSS feeds, websites and other documents measured? Are the ‘tags’ visible when you search your content? Once these questions have been answered, you are set to play. Be smart, not over confident! Nobody is better acquainted with your business than yourself. Take advice, but don’t follow all. Don’t fall into the trap that others lay for you when measuring your goals. So, now that you know how you can measure your social media presence, what are you waiting for? Head out and make a mark on the web world! *********************

Information may be abridged and therefore incomplete. This document/information does not constitute, and should not be considered a substitute for, legal or financial advice. Each financial situation is different, the advice provided is intended to be general. Please contact your financial or legal advisors for information specific to your situation.